Above the East China Sea: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

famous for having so many people want to hook up with you. Him,” he corrects himself.
    I don’t really care whether Kirby wants to hook up with me or if he calls me Tiger Woods, any more than he really cares if I call him Lucky Charms. Or Jake cares if we call him Jackie Chan. Or, for that matter, than Jacey Bosfeld would care if I dubbed her Snow White. Her boyfriend, though, Zavie Plutino from somewhere back east in Rhode Island or New Jersey, one of those states with no air force bases, Zavie would no doubt be highly offended if I started calling him Guido.
    Why? Because Zavie is not one of us. He’s not a military kid. Xavier Plutino enlisted at eighteen. Of course, it was my big sister, Codie, who explained that military kids enlisted at birth. This world, the United States military, is all we’ve ever known, and way more than almost any other, it is a color-blind world. Intriguing racial mixes, yummy caramel people like me and DaQuane and half the other kids out here, are the norm. Now, rank, that’s different. No one’s going to joke about rank. Codie maintained that rank is our race. That we’re not racists, but we
are
rankists.
    And that’s why every single one of us knows that Wynn O’Dell’s dad is a full-bird colonel. And that Jacey Bosfeld and Kirby Kernshaw’s dads are both staff sergeants. That Jake’s father is a civilian but permanently attached to Kadena in a way no one is quite sure about, but that doesn’t really matter, since civilian is civilian and therefore outside of our visible color spectrum. And they all know that my mom is a master sergeant and, most pertinent of all, that she’s the new NCOIC of Dependent Security for the base police. That she works out of the Death Star, Security Forces HQ, and could get any of their families transferred with one OSI investigation. When the Quasis found out who my mom was, they were nervous until they realized that I only talk to her when absolutely necessary. Besides, since I do all the shit they do, there’s no chance I’d narc anyone out. But none of that matters. Not tonight. Not with the Cuervo and the bulb of dancing smokebeing passed around a beach fire spiraling golden sparks high up into a sky as dark as tar.
    “Hey,” Kirby says, “I might have gotten the shipment today.” He’s been teasing us all summer with hints about a shipment of some new designer drug he was supposed to be getting, and we’re all burned out on hearing about it. When no one says anything, Kirby huddles around the bottle of Cuervo and collapses on the sand, where he goes into a sulk, all sad and deflated. Lying on the sand, his back to us, working on the Cuervo, he’s silent for a long time. Then he starts sighing. The fifth or sixth time he heaves a giant one, I crumble and ask, “Shipment of what, Kirby?”
    He sits up. The backs of his bare arms are covered in sand. A dried piece of seaweed clings to his hair like a tribal decoration. “Oh just a little safe, totally legal, totally awesome high.”
    Jacey unsuctions herself from Zavie’s face and demands, “What awesome high?”
    “Oh,
now
you’re interested.
Now
you’re all, ‘Oh, Kirby, you’re so interesting. Oh, Kirby, tell me more.’ ”
    Jacey shrugs. “No, I’m not. Don’t tell me. I don’t care.”
    “Okay, bath salts. Everyone back in the world is doing it.”
    Jake shakes his head like he can’t believe what he just heard. “Kernshaw, we talked about this. Okay, buddy? Remember what I said?”
    “The shit’s legal, dude.”
    “Maybe. Technically,” Jake says. “In a few states back in the world. But we ain’t in the world, are we, ‘dude’?”
    “Hay-sus, Jackie Chan, who died and made you my CO?”
    The Cuervo and the vaporizer make their way to me and I lose what little interest I had in Kirby’s babbling. Zavie torches the glass; I take a hit and wash it down with tequila. As the liquor and smoke unfreeze my insides enough that I can inhale most of a full breath, I